


Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well

by viktorkrumn



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Book Compliant (Good Omens), Gen, Happy, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viktorkrumn/pseuds/viktorkrumn
Summary: The Them get together for the first time after the almost-apocalypse. It's the last day of summer and Adam has some nefarious plans. More book-compliant than show-compliant, but you don't have to read the book to understand.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tbehartoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tbehartoo/gifts).



> Written for tbehartoo for my follower celebration on Tumblr. The prompt: the Them getting together for the first time after the apocalypse [that] didn't happen. Would they be a lot more careful about what they do? Does Adam still have powers? Is Adam still the leader? Are they making new plans for saving the world?
> 
> Title is irrelevant, I just liked it.

Adam Young was standing in the chalk quarry, their usual meeting place and secret hideout, with all the authority he could muster in his eleven year old human body. It was quite a lot of authority, in fact.

“Right.” He said. “It’s the last day of summer, and we’ve got to take full advantage of it.” He glanced down at Dog. “How’s that, Dog? Do I seem confident?”

Dog whined. He scratched behind his ear. Then he whined again.

“You’re right, I should be friendlier. Like this. Hey, gang. What do you want to do for the last day of summer?”

“I dunno,” said Pepper, coming around the corner into the quarry’s entrance. “You tell us, Adam. You always do.”

“It’s ‘cause you have the best ideas,” added Brian earnestly.

“Oh, hi, guys.”

“I heard from my mum, who heard from your mum, that you got into trouble for stealing some apples yesterday.” Wensleydale took his glasses off and wiped them on the edge of his shirt. There was always a lot of dust floating around the old quarry. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. My dad didn’t want to ground me for two days in a row. He said I would just lounge around all day and watch TV.”

“So you didn’t get punished at all?” Asked Pepper incredulously.

“I didn’t say that.” Adam picked up a stick and threw it for Dog to fetch. “I didn’t get any dessert last night, and I’m not allowed to use the big TV for another two days.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Brian couldn’t imagine many worse punishments than not getting to eat dessert and not being able to watch TV. Perhaps it was because his parents couldn’t come up with any.

“Anyway,” Adam brightened up, “it’s the last day of summer. Let’s do something fun.”

“How do  _ you  _ know that it’s the last day of summer? Seems like something that the weathermen ought to tell us.”

“I just do, Wensley. Trust me, tomorrow it’ll be all cold and windy, and by next week our mothers will all force us to wear coats everywhere we go.”

“Mine won’t.”

“Yes, she will, Pepper. You’ll just take yours off the second you leave the house because you’re opposed to authority.” This from Wensleydale.

“Shut up, Wensley. She can’t make me.”

At that moment Dog returned, stick clasped tightly in his jaw. It wasn’t the stick that Adam had thrown, but he had fetched a stick alright. Adam pulled it from Dog’s mouth absentmindedly and fed him a treat. “How was the circus yesterday?”

“Oh, it was brilliant!” Brian jumped around excitedly. “We helped set up the tents, and they let us feed some of the animals. They’re coming again next month, so you didn’t really miss nothing.”

“Any use going there today?”

“It won’t be that exciting once it’s already set up.” Pepper kicked a pebble morosely. “I wish the circus could arrive every day.”

“Then it wouldn’t be nearly as exciting when it did,” explained Adam. “That’s why they don’t do it. And anyway, I’ve got something better for us to do.”

This cheered Pepper right up. “What is it?”

“We’re going to get revenge on Mr. Tyler for telling my dad where we were when we went to the air base. We were just saving the world, and those stupid grown-ups had to punish us for that. They always want to keep all the fun to themselves.”

“It sounds like that’s just your revenge, Adam.” Brian was inevitably munching on a crisp packet.

“Adam’s dad is the one who told all of our parents, dummy. I’m not allowed to ride my bike anywhere for... forever, basically. My mum says I can’t be trusted to be anywhere that I can’t walk to.”

“Pepper’s right. And anyway, we can get revenge on a few people today. Who don’t you like, Brian?”

“I dunno. The witch in Jasmine Cottage still scares me.” Brian shoved the empty crisp packet into his pocket, instead of dropping it on the ground. That was new.

“I don’t know, I think she was on our side in the whole saving-the-world business.” Wensleydale scratched his head. “Speaking of revenge, who made the last move? Us or the Johnsonites?”

“It was definitely us.” Adam wasn’t actually so sure of that. “But we can always make two moves in a row.”

“That wouldn’t be very honorable.” Wensleydale considered this for a second. He pushed his glasses up his nose, and remembered the time that Greasy Johnson had broken them. “But I guess we could.”

“Right then. Mr. Tyler for me, Greasy Johnson for Wensley, and the witch for Brian. Even if she is on our side, that doesn’t mean that she’s nice.” The rest of the Them thought Adam was very wise for saying that. “Who do you want to get revenge on, Pepper?”

“My little sister stole all of my candy.”

“Brilliant. Let’s get ice cream while we brainstorm.” Adam marched out of the quarry, friends and Dog in tow. “Who has money?”

Wensleydale rummaged around in his pockets. “I have enough for… two people. Brian probably doesn’t have anything, right?”

Brian nodded. “My parents don’t trust me with money. They think I’d lose it.”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. They almost never give me any to lose.”

Pepper pulled some change from her pocket triumphantly and handed it to Wensleydale so he could count it. Wensleydale was the Them’s unofficial accountant. “That’s three pounds. Adam, do you have any money?”

Adam patted all of his pockets. “No. Sorry.” His clothes had just come out of the laundry, which meant that his mother had meticulously emptied them of change, pieces of paper, and mud.

“Oh. We’re missing two pounds, then.”

That’s when Adam spotted something shiny on the road up ahead. Running to it, he bent down and picked up a two pound coin. Adam had always been extremely lucky in this kind of way. He didn’t even have to actively wish for things for them to come true. “Don’t worry! We’re all getting ice cream today.”

The rest of the gang caught up with him and gathered around excitedly. “It’s so cool how you always find just the right thing, Adam.” Brian was the second most common beneficiary of Adam’s luck, by a very small margin.

“You just have to look around you to find all sorts of things.” Adam had been oblivious to his unique powers his whole life, and that wasn’t going to change now that he knew they existed. He kept strolling towards the ice cream parlor.

Brian, who wasn’t very attentive, agreed with Adam wholeheartedly that you only had to look in order to find things. He just didn’t do the looking part. Pepper and Wensleydale, on the other hand, often looked around to try and find something exciting or useful, and they almost never did. At least, not nearly as much as Adam, which to them felt like never. “Adam,” Wensleydale looked to Pepper, who nodded at him. “Do you think maybe it’s only  _ you _ who finds things so easily?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just… We just, Pepper and I, we look around for spare change or discarded toys or candy that our mums just happened to leave out, but we never find anything like that. And you always do.”

“I’m just lucky. Besides, maybe you aren’t looking hard enough.”

“Adam, do you think it has anything to do with what those people at the air base said?” This time Pepper looked to Wensleydale for support. “Because it kind of sounded like the Devil… they thought the Devil was your dad. And they thought you were very special.”

Adam quickened his pace. “That’s ridiculous. Listen to yourself. I’m just lucky.”

And maybe it was part of Adam’s luck, or maybe he was manipulating his friends’ minds again (although if that were the case, you can be sure that he wasn’t doing it on purpose), or maybe kids will just accept anything as fact, but Pepper and Wensleydale let the subject go and didn’t bring it up again for many years.

Twenty minutes later, the four of them were sitting at a small table in the ice cream parlor, happily licking, biting, or scarfing down their ice cream. “Right, enough dilly-dallying. What are we going to do to Mr. Tyler and the witch and Pepper’s sister and the Johnsonites?”

“We can hide in my sister’s closet with scary costumes and jump out to scare her.”

“I have a werewolf mask in my room from last year.” Brian sucked on his ice cream cone thoughtfully. “Or my mum might have thrown it out.”

Adam scrunched his nose. “I reckon we’d get bored waiting for your sister to come into her room.”

“Plus, your mum will never let us all in your house. She says we leave mud everywhere. Even places we can’t reach.”

“Right, you don’t all have to rain on my idea.” Pepper slumped down in her chair. “Except you, Brian. Thank you for offering your mask, which you might not even have, you tosser.”

“It’s really not my fault. My mum says I attract clutter without even trying. She’s constantly trying to declutter.”

“Sorry, Pepper. Adam and I just like to be more practical. You and Brian are the free spirits. It’s your imagination that makes you great.”

“S’alright, Wensley. Thanks.”

Adam had been lost in thought during the latter part of this exchange. He often left the others to bicker among themselves while he came up with new ideas. “We could steal Shutzi.” Shutzi was Mr. and Mrs. Tyler’s dog.

Brian seemed horrified at the idea. “What would we do with him?”

“Nothing bad, you twit. We’d just hide him.” Pepper liked trying out new insults on Brian. He didn’t mind much.

“I think that Shutzi belongs more to Mrs. Tyler than Mr. Tyler. And she’s never done anything bad to us.”

“She married him,” said Pepper with disdain. “Who knows who he would be bothering if she hadn’t?”

“That’s actually a very interesting question. Have any of you heard of the butterfly effect? This could be an example of that happening on a bigger scale — ”

“Shut up, Wensley,” chimed the other three.

Another minute or two passed in comfortable silence. Then Pepper piped up again. “Do you reckon we could steal the witch’s powers?”

“I don’t think she really has special powers. She just knows how to brew potions and use herbs and read prophecies and whatnot.”

“How d’you know she reads prophecies, Adam?”

“I don’t really know how I know. I just think she does.”

“We could steal her potion books, then.” Pepper sat up, her eyes igniting. “We could burn them!”

“The smoke would be terrible for the environment.”

“You’re such a stickler, Adam.”

“He  _ is _ right, you know,” said Wensleydale.

The Them had never cared much about the environment before (at least, the Them that weren’t Wensleydale). They had never cared about any of the consequences of their actions. A week ago, they didn’t even really believe in witches.

“What about the Johnsonites?”

“What about them, Adam?”

“Well, I dunno. You’re the one who wanted to get revenge on them. We haven’t thought of anything for them yet.”

“We haven’t actually thought of any good ideas for the rest of our targets, either,” pointed out Brian, who was trying, futilely, to get an ice cream stain off his shirt.

“I guess that’s not really the point at all, is it?” The other three stared at Adam quizzically. “We were never going to break into Jasmine Cottage and steal books. We wouldn’t know what to do with the dog even if we did somehow manage to get hold of him. I guess… I guess it’s more fun to fantasize about these things than it is to actually try and do them.”

Pepper bit into the last of her ice cream cone. Brian rubbed at his shirt with a napkin. Wensleydale adjusted his glasses. They all thought about how Adam was right. Then they all saw Adam grabbing an empty cone from the counter to feed to Dog, and they all got ready to run.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear from you in the comments.


End file.
